The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
Interpretation
Our thoughts hold power over our stress levels, and we can choose them.
William James emphasizes the profound impact of our thoughts on our mental state, particularly concerning stress. In this quote, he suggests that while we cannot always control external circumstances, we can exercise the power of choice over our thoughts, which can help mitigate the feelings of stress we experience in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about managing stress in the workplace.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
No cause more frequently produces bashfulness than too high an opinion of our own importance. He that imagines an assembly filled with his merit, panting with expectation, and hushed with attention, easily terrifies himself with the dread of disappointing them, and strains his imagination in pursuit of something that may vindicate the veracity of fame, and show that his reputation was not gained by chance.
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness.
Words will not fail when the matter is well considered.
The right question is usually more important than the right answer.
Many people excuse their own faults but judge other persons harshly. We should reverse this attitude by excusing others' shortcomings and by harshly examining our own.
The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.
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